


To Earn The Sky

by Sanjuno



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: All the horrible warnings are for Hojo, Cid Highwind gets shit done, Cid wins at life through the power of shouting and tea, Did you know Herakles once had a threesome with a giant snake lady and her husband?, Echidna had so many kids, Fuck you Hojo why so creepy?, I have this thing, I love Cid he gets to be all the things, I'm warning you that Hojo gets a decent amount of screen time in this fic, Multi, Should I warn for Hojo?, So many epic things you can do to these people, The husband was a dragon, The snake lady was literally half snake, This thing where I mess about with all the shiney shiney mythology scattered around Gaia, so many
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:17:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5185049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanjuno/pseuds/Sanjuno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows how much Hojo liked to play God with the subjects of his experiments. This time around? His attempts to create the ULTIMATE WARRIOR (tm) succeeded a little too well. </p><p>Fair Echidna with her gleaming scales was wed to the Dragon King of Skies. Echidna was the Mother of Monsters and the Mother of Heroes both. Monsters are made into Heroes, and Heroes become Monsters. When the truth comes out and the blood starts flying, Hojo would regret making his Greatest Creation quite so difficult to kill. Short is the life of the man who thinks to steal what the Dragon has claimed as his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Start As You Mean To Go On

Professor Hojo was, to put it bluntly, in a bad mood. He was attempting to repeat his success with Sephiroth again, and failing rather spectacularly with each attempt. The closest to a successful cloning was with No. 1, who was physically perfect, but had no mind. All of Hojo’s attempts to induce consciousness in the clone had met with failure.  
  
Hojo was beginning to wonder if he should scrap the cloning idea and start again from scratch.  
  
But Sephiroth was such a success…  
  
Wait.  
  
That was it!  
  
Not starting from scratch, but from the beginning.  
  
Hojo laughed at the brilliant simplicity of it all as he had the lab prepared and set up for the next trial experiment. He finished rearranging the equipment to his liking – his assistants were all imbeciles – and opened the triple sealed and locked storage unit – to which only he held the keys – containing the JENOVA project samples, removing three labelled ‘Subject L, ovum.’  
  
“Now then my dear wife, shall we make more Sephiroth’s?” Hojo murmured, tilting the sample tube to catch the fluorescent lights of the lab. He grimaced then, recalling an unpleasant memory. A series of unfortunate lab accidents – later discovered to be deliberate sabotage – had left Hojo himself unable to donate to the REMNANT project, and all of his previous donations had been wasted on the preceding failures. He then paused and turned a complicated look – part vengeful glee, part consideration, part baleful resentment – on another sealed sample storage unit.  
  
“Utter nonsense, it means nothing. There is no need for unscientific, sentimental foolishness. The control remains constant, why not take this opportunity to build on the prototype?” A sneer twisted the scientists pallid features. “After all, it’s the least he can contribute to science.”  
  
Pleased with his reasoning Hojo cackled as he opened the storage unit bearing the label ‘CHAOS Project’ and withdrew three samples from the line of ‘Specimen V, spermatozoa’.  
  
The door to the unit closed with a thump which Hojo ignored as he proceeded with his newest attempt to replicate and surpass Sephiroth.  
  
=/=

  
“Shera’s in there!”  
  
Shock gave way to horror and fear as the ground crew stared at the rocket that was their pride and joy.  
  
“Shut it down ya idiots!” Their Captain’s voice over the radio kicked them into movement.  
  
“Aye Captain!” Several moments of frantic activity later the techs working the launch controls paled. “Something’s wrong! The shutdown commands won’t take!”  
  
“What?!” Captain Cid Highwind roared as he pounded on the emergency stop next to the pilot’s seat – it would damage the rocket more than the other method, but he would need to recalibrate the engines anyway after this – and started cursing as nothing happened. His hands went flying over the console as he input some last minute commands to delay the ignition procedures, gritting his teeth when that too refused to work.  
  
“Fuck! Keep tryin’ ta shut it down!” Cid shouted over the radio as he ran for the door. “I’ll try ta stop it manually and get Shera out!”  
  
The air around Cid was humming, roaring, and as he double-timed it towards the hatch that lead down into the engine room, Cid swore that he could hear time running out. One last leap carried him to and through the door, into the lower section of the rocket. The door was blown right out of its frame by one of Cid’s signature explosive strikes.  
  
But there was not enough time. Not nearly enough time. Cid found Shera, pale-faced beside a screaming engine, grabbed her, and ran hard for the exit. Heard the wrongness in the engine go from ‘bad-news’ to ‘fire-in-the-hole’. Grabbed Shera up in that last second and fucking carried her the last few paces. Did not bother with the ladder and just leapt clear.  
  
The engine blew just as Cid’s feet left the deck. The rocket went up in a hot shockwave of wind and fire that sent the two engineers tumbling head over heels. Cid hit the ground hard, heard things inside go ‘crunch’, felt the pain that informed him that they had been his insides making the breaking noises.  
  
There was a roaring in his ears, drowning out the words in Shera’s screaming. The sky was the wrong colour, soot-grey and red-yellow-orange, nothing like its proper blue. Hands grabbed him, lifted, and carried him away from the wreckage.  
  
The last thing Cid Highwind saw, through the pain of his burns and broken bones, was the blazing hulk of the rocket, his dream burning up, tumbling down in a swirl of sparks like flame-hued stars. The stars danced around in circles, following him down into the green shadowed darkness of unconsciousness.  
  
=/=  
  
Professor Hojo was utterly fascinated. He had reached a roadblock in his work on the REMNANT Project and one of his informants from the SHIN-RA main hospital – a man paid very well to keep an eye out for any interesting medical anomalies – had taken the opportunity to send him copies of the patient files for two people.  
  
A man and a woman who worked for SHIN-RA’s Aerospace division had been caught in an explosion and covered in second and third degree burns. The medics posted to the small Rocket Town Project had done their best to stabilize the two victims and rushed them to Midgar for treatment. Of course, all but the bare minimum of Potions, Elixirs and healing Materia had been sent with the main force of the army to Wutai. The doctors had done their best, but there was only so much they could do with their limited resources, and both would have to undergo a series of skin grafts and a long rehabilitation. Reconstructive surgery was rapidly becoming an uncommon thing in this new age, with the reactors producing so much more materia than the old method of harvesting mako fountains.  
  
But it was at this point that the report got interesting.  
  
Within a week of the incident the woman’s burns had mostly healed over, leaving her with scars, but none of the horrible disfigurement commonly caused but such extensive burns. Even more intriguing was the report on the man. His burns had scabbed over and then simply been ‘shed’. Much like a snake that had grown overlarge for its old skin, the burned, ruined skin had been discarded for new, unscarred skin.  
  
Combined with his miraculous recovery, the man was reputedly a heavy smoker, but his lungs showed no signs of scarring or contamination. In fact, his lungs were healthier than even non-smokers.  
  
Fascinating.  
  
It seemed to be some sort of hereditary resistance to the damage caused by the fire element. He would have to gather as many samples as possible before the man woke and was allowed to leave. Unfortunately his informant was unable to get close enough to keep the man unconscious, and his engineering skills made him worth something to that fat fool Shinra. Hojo was piqued at being denied the chance to study the man in depth, but the high IQ listed in the file was a nice bonus.  
  
How novel it would be to have fireproofed Sephiroths!  
  
Once he isolated the chromosome sequences that carried the ability he would have to see how well they integrated with the specimens in then REMNANT Project.  
  
=/=  
  
Hojo scowled at the monitor screens. The REMNANT Project had been working so well until now. Unfortunately each specimen in the project had begun to degrade. Each new infusion of the mako enhanced JENOVA serum resulted in worse results than the last. Now all three subjects were nearing critical failure. No. 25 in particular was rapidly approaching the termination point.  
  
For a moment Hojo considered scrapping the current specimens completely and restarting the REMNANT Project from the beginning.  
  
But no, he would not tolerate another failure. The experiments would continue as planned. If a particular test proved to be the last for these subjects then it would be no great loss, and he would still have the collected research data for the next round. He could always collect more samples after all.  
  
Deciding to start with the least likely to survive, Hojo spliced in the genomes harvested from the engineer’s genetic sample.  
  
Within the hour, No. 25 was showing signs of improvement.  
  
Thirty-two hours later, Hojo was gloating over the readings he was getting. While subjects 23 and 24 had remained unchanged, 25 had stabilized and rapidly began surpassing all of Hojo’s best scenario projections. Pleased to have discovered a way to salvage his experiment, Hojo wasted no time in adding the fire-retardant sequences to the other two subjects.  
  
Within the day No. 23 and No. 24 had stabilized, and at the end of forty-eight hours the REMNANT Project was back on track.  
  



	2. Journey Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cid and Shera went out in a blaze of glory. They're just trying to treat the flash blindness now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha! I wrote more for this fic!

=/=

**(A journey to the underworld is not unexpected during a near death experience.)**

There was too much _fucking light_.

Well aware the he was either unconscious or _dead_ , Cid Highwind snarled at the swirling, glowing, prismatic vortex that surrounded him. This was, in his not-so humble opinion, absolute _fucking_ bullshit. A man should _not_ have to put up with this much twinkly nonsense after getting his head blown off.

As if his migraine was not bad enough to _start_ with, now Cid had to put up with the rave lights of the afterlife. Lucy in a sky of _motherfucking_ diamonds.

_‘… Captain?_ ’ Shera wavered against the glow, her presence nowhere near as solid as Cid’s enraged blaze. ‘ _Where… where_ are _we?_ ’

‘ _Fucking Lifestream or some shit like that._ ’ Cid snarled out, wishing mightily for the ability to hit something so he could vent some frustration. ‘ _Like I paid any attention to his hocus-pocus hallucination bullshit._ ’

‘ _And… what should we do, Captain?_ ’ Hesitant, Shera drew closer, pulling away from the currents plucking at the edges of her mind with an uneasy shudder. ‘ _We can’t stay here. How do we get back?_ ’

‘ _Fucked if I know_.’ All but growling, Cid let Shera huddle up against him, his seething rage standing as a bulwark against the pull of the light around them. ‘ _Don’t those fucking ‘near-death’ accounts say something about heading towards the light? Fucking find a shadow or something_.’

‘ _A… a shadow?_ ’ Shera was not tracking well, still stiff and terrified by their situation. ‘ _Captain… what?_ ’

‘ _There._ ’ Cid narrowed his eyes against the glare, looking for gaps in the flow. There were eddies in the current, places where the light thinned enough to be bearable. ‘ _Come on, this way_.’

‘ _Of course, Captain_.’ Shera stumbled, but gamely followed Cid’s lead towards the less bright section of the Lifestream. It was nothing Shera would have labelled a shadow, but when the whole world was crafted of nothing but light anything less glaring would do.

Light that flickered and dimmed as they continued on. Light that shifted, darkened, started to take on almost-distinguishable shapes. A soft red glow, like emergency lighting. Comforting in its almost-familiarity. An odd fluidity to their surroundings, like diving deep into the sea.

A giant, serpentine bulk that shifted and turned to track their passage, balefire eyes glowing with an inferno of power. ‘ ** _HELLO, CHILDREN. WHAT IS IT THAT BRINGS YOU TO SEE MOTHER AFTER ALL THIS TIME?_** ’

Cid felt Shera clinging to his back as great, scaled coils looped around them, caging them in as an inhumanly lovely face gazed down on them. ‘ _Fucking Hel_.’

She was massive, her glittering scales crisscrossed with knotted scars. She was fearsome and awesome in the most ancient meaning of the word. She was beautiful and ageless, just the sight of her luminous eyes inviting a devotion of poetry. She was the maiden who wed the dragon, and the mother of every ancient legend. She was gatekeeper and guardian, the demon on your back that drove you forward.

She was Echidna, mother of the dragonborn.

Deaf to Shera’s pleading, Cid fell to his knees. (He had never thought to love anything but the skies with this sort of tender fierceness.)

Echidna looked upon the first of her children to find their way back down to her cage in an untold age, and she way the way he burned. Bright and strong as lightning, steady as the stars. This clever, wicked child that she called her own, who had come for her at long last.

Gently, sweetly, fair Echidna smiled. (She would be free, and the one who had dared to usurp her position would rue the day she cast Echidna down.)

=/=

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so admittedly I didn't write _much_ more for this fic, but something's better than nothing. XP

**Author's Note:**

> Started this ages and ages ago and am trying to rediscover the inspiration for it. Shouldn't take too much effort on my part. It was a really cool idea that kicked off this particular bunny.


End file.
